Rajmuat Dreams
by Rainstorm Amaya Arianrhod
Summary: Sarralyn Sarrasri Salmalin never meant to wind up in Rajmuat, but she did, and not everyone was happy about it.ACCIDENTALLY POSTED AS OTHER STORY DUE TO AUTHOR BOOBOO


**A/N:** I love my Sarralyn/Junim. Who loves her Sarralyn/Junim? I love my Sarralyn/Junim.

Flameth ye not because ye thinketh that such a neat-and-tidy too-good-to-be-true pairing Can Never Work, and don't worry about Sarralyn being a Mary-Sue. This account is a Sue-free zone... I hope.

**Disclaimer:** Not mine.

* * *

SSS she signed herself. Sarralyn Sarrasri Salmalín- quite the mouthful. Slipping off your tongue and getting mangled in the process, sibilants crushed. Even Queen Dovasary, reknowned for knowing everything about every remotely important personage to enter her land from date of birth to mother's maiden name and certainly how to pronounce their name, had some difficulty with it.

Junim got it first try.

Admittedly, Junim handled Kyprin and Common on a daily basis, inflecting either with accents only when he wanted to (although Sarralyn's bat ears detected a slight Kyprin swing to his Common and a slight Common quality to his Kyprin), and all his siblings were blessed with peculiar names that he'd had to learn to pronounce.

Sarralyn had listened in a lot in Tortall, which resulted in a wider education than her mother suspected and her father wanted for her, and she knew that people did fall in love –witness her parents- or thought they did –witness every other ballad- but Sarralyn didn't. All hells, Sarralyn didn't even enjoy most people's company if they weren't family, and sometimes not even then.

So why did she find herself liking Junim? Sarralyn tried to dissect it. The smile that made you want to smile back? Sarralyn couldn't remember smiling before she came to Rajmuat. The way he never tried to abbreviate her name? She liked that. The way he took her at face value? She'd never come across that before. That unnerving way of knowing everything about you? It didn't bother Sarralyn.

Lots of things in Rajmuat didn't really Sarralyn. The heat was one of them. When even Aly started muttering curses and finding patches of shade, Sarralyn remained outside, basking in the sun. "Like a reptile," Junim grinned. "You will get sun-burnt, you know-" "I don't care," Sarralyn replied, "and neither do you."

"Is it a Tortallan thing?" he would tease, "Baking yourself whenever the sun comes out?" and Sarralyn would not dignify that with a reply.

She'd never seen so much colour in one place at one time either. The bright colours of the palace gardens and raka sarongs, the blue of the sea visible from Queen Dovasary's observatory, the marble of the pavilions. She felt a little monochrome in the face of colour, but that was all right. It was bright and interesting and lively as home had never been (Daine would have called it 'headache-inducing'.)

The only thing that Sarralyn didn't like about being in the Copper Isles, in fact, was the attitude some of Junim's siblings took to her- Ochobai particularly, although Sarralyn knew that he had a sister called Ulasu nobody ever mentioned whom Junim thought would like Sarralyn – Sukhoni and Kayam, who said not a word to her, Enitan whom she hardly ever saw...

Sarralyn didn't know that words could hurt until she caught Ochobai and a boy from one of the raka noble houses deep in one of those things that she had heard about back at home. She ran, but Ochobai ran faster, and when Sarralyn came to a dead end she had to halt and turn and face the raging teenager.

"You stupid bitch! Why d'ya even come to Rajmuat, you in'erfering trollop? Because you didn't like it back home or something? You had to find a new place to mess with people's minds? ANSWER ME!"

Sarralyn couldn't. Ochobai had broken her nose already, and she was trying to contain the blood. But she couldn't, wouldn't, use her magic on Ochobai- what if she lost control and blasted her? Ochobai had no shields to protect her.

"Luarin weakling!" Ochobai shouted. "Luarin sneaking, creeping, weakling! What'cha going to do?" Ochobai spoke with a Kyprin accent when she spoke Common. "Tell on me? Run to my brother? Run to Junim? He's just as guilty of murdering a sibling as you are, you know! Ask him about Ulasu! ASK HIM ABOUT WHAT HE DID TO ULASU!"

Then, as quickly as she'd started shouting, Ochobai cooled off. She reached down, twisted Sarralyn's broken nose, and strolled off. When she reached the end of the alleyway, she turned back, and, with a despicable casualness, called Sarralyn by a Kyprin word, the translation of which eluded Sarralyn, which was probably a very good thing.

"Rikash is not dead," Sarralyn whispered, and, wincing, returned her nose to something like its rightful position, stood, and walked unsteadily away, in search of, if not a good healer, than something to clean the blood off her nose.

She did not find a healer, but she did find a convenient pool to wash it in that lacked the flesh-eating fish –piranha, the raka called them- and was far enough away from the main portion of the palace that Ochobai wouldn't look for her if Ochobai decided that a broken nose was not punishment enough for Sarralyn's crime. And what crime? Sarralyn thought rebelliously. Walking in on her and another boy? She shouldn't have chosen a pavilion with windows, Sarralyn added, irritated. Even her parents... Sarralyn turned green mentally and skirted that thought.

That was where Junim found her, washing dried blood off her already-setting nose.

"Sarralyn... have you been in a fight?"

"No," Sarralyn said bitterly, "no, I don't know how to fight. Evidently Ochobai does."

"Ochobai?" Junim knelt and lifted her face towards him. "Bloody Ochobai. Why?"

"I walked in on her and a boy," Sarralyn told Junim. "An' my nose is still bleeding."

"It is," Junim agreed. "Well, I knew Ochobai slept around."

"She said something about Ulasu."

"Ulasu. Oh, I see. She thinks I did Ulasu a disservice in telling her to use what she had."

"To what?"

"To use her talent for spying. Ochobai has always been very close to Ulasu and Ochobai believes that Ulasu going off to Scanra- Hamrkeng, to be exact, is suicide." He shrugged, and let go his gentle hold on Sarralyn's chin. Sarralyn went back to washing the blood off it. "Probably was. But it wasn't my idea."

"Mm," Sarralyn managed, completely unable to see herself giving Rikash career advice. "She seems to think you murdered her. Or at least bought the knife and the poison."

"Knife and poison? Look at me." Junim carefully probed the area around Sarralyn's nose. "You're catching up with the way my family works. We have a problem with daggers."

"Ow!"

"Yes, she was very thorough," Junim remarked.

"She's got a wide vocabulary of swearwords, too," Sarralyn said. "What does-" she tried to recreate the last word Ochobai had said to her- "mean?"

Junim rocked back on his heels. He looked furious. "She called you that?"

Sarralyn nodded. "So what does it mean?"

Junim kissed Sarralyn gently in the middle of her forehead, about the only place that wasn't smeared with dried blood. "It means that I am going to talk to my dearest sister. Ochobai may not like it, but she's going to have to be fairly nice to you."

"Why should she?" Sarralyn asked gloomily, resting her head carefully on his shoulder.

Junim kissed her again. "Because I like you. And I say so. And you, Sarralyn, need a healer... come on."


End file.
